'I believe in how America interfaces with the rest of the world. We live in this giant globe. We are 300 million people and there are 6.8 billion others out there? And we're dictating the codes, the coexistence? One of the problems is-and I come back-ignorance. The American people are some of the most ignorant people you're going to meet on the face of the Earth about the world we live in. That's the bottom line. We can't pass basic tests about global geography, let alone American geography. And as an American citizen I have a duty and responsibility to participate in the process of informing and educating the American public so it can rise above its ignorance so it won't be intimidated by fear derived from that ignorance and they'll make the right decision. These are the things that motivate me. Trust me: It's not about making money, because if it was I've certainly taken the wrong path.
'... I'm a realist.
'...And I'm somebody who believed in a policy of regime change. I believe that we should've strived to change the policy of the regime of Saddam Hussein. But there's a big difference between changing a regime through a pattern of interface with Iraq that promotes growth of democratic institutions within Iraq so that Saddam Hussein is done away with without any loss of American life, and a policy of regime change that has us invading, occupying and destroying a nation....
'...Not only can we get out, we must get out. There is no positive thing that will come from the continued presence of American troops inside Iraq. We're not contributing anything, anything positive. All these lunatics in Fox News and others can talk about building schools, painting schools ... whatever you want, and that's just absurd in the extreme. I don't even think anyone's selling that poison anymore. They're talking about the potential of doing good, but no one's talking about us actually doing good because we're not doing good. So, can we get out? Absolutely. Six months and we can have everybody out of Iraq. It's a piece of cake. It's not hard to do that.
' "Should we get out?" is the question. Do we have a moral responsibility, having gone into Iraq and broken it so bad-you know the old Pottery Barn rule: you broke it, you own it? --Should we stay and try and fix it? And, again, I believe this is fair debate to have. It's a very legitimate debate to have. I would, first of all, say that it's a debate that all Americans must be participants in, because to stay in Iraq.... I believe you don't talk about solving a problem unless you've properly defined the problem. If we're going to say the problem revolves around saving Iraq, rebuilding it, we're talking about decades-long involvement that's going to cost trillions of dollars-not billions: trillions of dollars-and will cost us significantly more lives. And it may not work. Some people say it's a gamble worth taking. Fine. I'd just ask the American people to pass a pop quiz. Tell me about the city of Karbala. Tell me about the city of Baghdad. Tell me about the city of Kirkuk. Explain to me the significance of these three cities both in terms of Iraqi history past, current and future. And if you're sitting there shaking your head, going, "What the hell is he talking about?" ladies and gentlemen, we need to get out of Iraq right now! Because if you can't answer that question right now, you are not even equipped to weigh in intelligently about a policy decision that has America committed to several decades of involvement in this nation.
'Karbala is the birthplace of Shiism. That's where Hussein [in the seventh century] was wiped out by Sunni apostates, creating not only the Shia faith but creating the schism between the Shia and the Sunni.
'Baghdad was sacked in the 12th century by the Mongols. As a result of the sack of Baghdad, the Sunnis said, "We got defeated because we lost pure Islamic faith." It's the birth of Wahhabism. Wahhabism, Osama bin Laden's version of Sunni Islamic fundamentalism, was derived by foreign occupation of Baghdad. Huh? We're at war with al-Qaida and the Wahhabists. And we just empowered them by occupying Baghdad. If it isn't sinking into your head yet, it never will.
'Kirkuk. Oil. Kurds. Turkmen. Shia. Kirkuk. If you're going to have any hope of a unified Iraq, you have to tell me how Kirkuk is going to emerge from any post-Saddam environment, a unified city. Kirkuk is where the formal civil war in Iraq will start. Not Baghdad, not Karbala: Kirkuk.
'And if you don't know this, if you can't tell me why, if you can't tell me who the players are, ladies and gentlemen, you're ill equipped to enter into a debate about the long-term presence of Americans in Iraq. So that's where I come down to. Can we get out of Iraq? Absolutely. Should we get out of Iraq? If we, the people of the United States of America, don't know enough about a country where we're asking our armed services to give the ultimate sacrifice for, then we have no business being in that country.
Scheer: '...I do think applause is in order. The question I have, sitting here, I'm thinking, if you're so smart, why aren't you president? [Audience laughs.] Where did you learn all that stuff? In the Marines?'
Ritter: 'A lot of people mock the Marine Corps, and sometimes it deserves to be mocked. Because we shave our heads they call us jarheads, and blockheads, and other terms of endearment. The most intellectual, philosophical conversations I've ever had-and I've been to Harvard, I've been to Yale, I've been to Columbia, I've been to Berkeley, etc.-are at a bar on a Friday night in a Marine Corps officer club with my fellow officers. Because-you know what?-unlike your Harvard and Yale and Columbia and Berkeley students, we understand what life and death is about. We understand what we are being committed to. We have philosophical discussions. We study the art of war. We study philosophy. And we challenge everything. And that's the big thing: challenge everything. We take nothing at face value. Battalion commander puts out a new policy. We sit there and we tear it apart. "What the hell is the old man talking about? That won't work. This won't work." We challenge because our lives depend upon it. As an intelligence officer I was told: "Never tell your boss what he or she wants to hear. That's not your job. Your job is to tell them what the facts are. That's your job."
Scheer: 'So what do people say to you now, privately, when you run into your old buddies. Do they say, "You've got it right but we can't speak out"? Why isn't there more dissent?'
Ritter: 'It depends who they are. I'll tell you, inspectors more and more are sending me e-mails, calling me up saying, "Wow, Ritter, you were right, we were wrong. We apologize. We're on your side. Da-da-da." Military guys, they've always been on my side-the ones that I know. Again, I don't mean to be insulting of anybody, but there's three circles of people I care about: my family, my friends, and my colleagues. And I will tell you, without exception, the people who fall into those three categories, the people who know me, the only people who know me, have been on my side 100 percent. When you get outside of that, people who don't know me, they seek to project any sort of personality trait on me that they want to. I'm a disgruntled employee. I'm this, I'm that, I'm the other thing. I don't care about what they think. What I care about are the people who know me. And I'll tell you, my colleagues in the Marine Corps, United States Army and the armed forces of the United States of America have been behind me 100 percent. Because they knew me before I challenged the United States on Iraq. They knew me when I was challenging the United States on the Iran-Iraq war. They knew me when I was challenging the United States on the Soviet ballistic missile production rates. They knew me when I was challenging the United States on claims of killing Scud missiles during the first Gulf War. They knew that, as an intelligence officer, I brought the highest degree of integrity possible to the game. I wasn't always right, but I never deliberately misled anybody.'
Scheer: '...Really, what you're talking about is you're someone who's asked to pay the price for our folly. That it's not a game, it's not a talk show thing, right? It's not a way of winning elections. And yet most of the foreign policy issues that you discuss in your book and we talk about have been used as part of a game, a political game. Hillary, for example. I didn't mean to single out Hillary. She's not alone. Biden takes a similar position. There are others. Kerry certainly took that position before he changed, and so forth. What I get from you in reading your books, rereading some of them, is a sense of outrage. I can only think of Kevin Tillman, Pat Tillman's brother, who wrote a marvelous piece before the election and truthfully said the same thing. We put people in harm's way, not because we really think there's a national security objective, but because it's important to some other agenda. I just want to know why there aren't more Scott Ritters. Why doesn't it drive more people crazy? Why aren't more people speaking out about that?
Ritter: I can't answer that question. I'm very honest about who I am and what I am. And I'll tell you this: I am somebody who is a true believer. I joined the Marine Corps, I love my country, I was black-and-white about the world we lived in, I was a Reagan Republican. I didn't even know what being a Reagan Republican meant. I just knew that that sounded good and that's what I wanted to do. I registered Republican. I voted Republican. I didn't study the candidates; I just went into the booth and went [making stamping motion] Republican, Republican, Republican, Republican, Republican, Republican. Because I thought that's what good Republicans did. I went out and did my job. I did what I was told to do. I did it very well. But then I found that-as you said-you think you're doing something that's part of the greater good only to find that you're actually serving as a front for somebody's political ambition, that has nothing to do with the national security of the United States of America. That you're asked to make sacrifices, or worse, if you're a leader, you're asking people who are trusting you by following you to make sacrifices. That these guys back there aren't willing to write the check.
'Now why aren't there more Scott Ritters? What does it take to cross that line? Americans are inherently trustful. I was at a book-signing the other day in La Quinta in Palm Springs, and one of the guys in the audience stood up, and before he asked his question, he apologized. He said: "In 2003 I thought you were a nut, I thought you were crazy, I thought you were off the reservation. I couldn't believe a word you said." And he apologized. And I said: "There's no reason to apologize. You had every right to believe that." When everybody else is saying this, and you've got this lone-wolf character saying something else, you have a right to be distrustful of that lone-wolf character, especially when he's talking about a subject that's not easy for you to investigate independently. You're dependent upon a media that's feeding you for the most part disinformation. Today I have the benefit of the doubt because everything I said turned out to be right, so I come in with a little more leverage. But the point is that the only thing that gave me the strength to speak out in 1998 was that I was uniquely positioned by circumstances of history to have total knowledge about a very difficult subject. Even my fellow inspectors, they didn't have total knowledge; they only had different pieces of the pie, and they were hesitant to commit to confronting the powers that be, because in the back of their minds they were saying, "There's things I might not know." And that's the problem. There will always be questions in the back of the minds of most well-meaning people, that "maybe I don't know something. Maybe these guys know something more than I do. I don't want to be the one who seems unpatriotic by stepping forward. I'm going to be trustful of the system." Ladies and gentlemen, I hope we've learned as American citizens that we can no longer be trustful of the system. The system is inherently corrupt because we are not engaged. The only way to reform the system is to invest in the system intellectually, emotionally, morally. And we're not doing that. There will be more Scott Ritters, Bob Sheers, other people. I believe everybody in this room has it in you to do the same that I did, that you've [motioning to Robert Scheer] done, that other people have done, if you empower yourself with knowledge and information. But, void of that, you simply wallow in ignorance.
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